Volume 1 Chapter 5 (1/2)

The Girl Who Lost Words

“da, Lee Hyun was already deflated

The South Korean Parliament, more prudent than His Prudence, had passed an unwanted bill nicknamed Leave No One Behind, which was devised to weed out social outcasts and misfits

The whole stupidity was founded on a theory that asserted that those ere born and brought up in defective backgrounds created a higher rate of violent cri to the law, all Korean citizens ere twenty years old or above with noticeable defects in their background were required to visit a psychiatrist occasionally for a ible for it as he had lost his parents in his childhood, and his adolescence had been haunted by the loan sharks

Lee Hyun went to the Great Society Rehabilitation Center

“I feel like I’ve time traveled back to the sixties Great Society, how la coested romantically decorated interiors The reception room was filled with the twenty year-olds who came take medical tests under the Socially Inept Law, so he had to waste another hour waiting for his turn to register

“Hi, I’m Lee Hyun I’m here to take a mental test under Leave No One Behind”

“I see Please fill out this forown handed a piece of paper to Lee Hyun

“What is this?”

“We will create a complete analysis of your mental state based on your answers to this questionnaire If you fall into the category of the socially inept, you will be ordered to enter the rehab center and receive periodic treatovernment will send a monthly check to your faoverned when they were suffering horrifying childhoods, abused by their parents or cast out from school

Now they had to accept a handicap if they wanted to apply to an undergraduate school when they were out of high school Worse still, they were not even eligible for governregate the have-­nots from the haves

“Yes, Ma’am”

Lee Hyun took the form and filled it out quickly The pen didn’t leave the surface of the paper Lee Hyun had thought of those questions forfrom his heart

“I’m done Can I leave now?”

“Sure Take this to cover your bus fare”

At least, the government showed a small token of pity Lee Hyun took the coins and left the asylum Meanwhile, the questionnaire sub the psychiatrists in the center

Cha Eunhee, PhD in psychiatry was laughing her head off as if her neck was broken The doctor whose attitude earned her the nickna ht to nurses

“Did she finally succeed in co is irated to the United States with her parents, both diploraduated cue of twenty, and earned her doctorate before she turned twenty-three

Co beauty and culture, yet puffed up with pride, she had never shown this level of humanity before, which became a topic on everyone’s lips In the end, the chief nurse decided to put her head above the parapet

“Dr Cha, what’s so funny?”

“Check this out”

Laughing so hard she was crying, Dr Cha gave the chief nurse what she was holding in her hand It was a single page of a form that someone had filed out under Leave No One Behind The Seven short questions and equally short answers

<tbody>Questionnaire

Name: Lee Hyun

1 What is your name?

Lee Hyun

2 What is your profession?

A great villain ill threaten world peace

3 What are you doing?

Filling out this questionnaire

4 What are the three s that you have done in your life?

Hit a Sold my account

5 What do you think of politicians In power?

Why can’t we just export thenize your social position?

After I watched ‘Planet of the Apes’

7 Hoould you describe your Identity In a single sentence?

I aon

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The nurse looked taken aback when she finished reading the docuraphic novel?”

“No It looks like one of the subjects filled this out this ht at the bottoain If he were a nutcase, he wouldn’t be observing society as sarcastically and precisely as he did in this questionnaire”

Against common sense, Dr Cha concluded he was mentally normal From a psychiatrist’s perspective, she could al from those answers

To be able to ridicule society in such a way, this young man named Lee Hyun must have lived a colorless life in a world of cruelty

“Whew” The chief nurse could not help but sigh

She had no reason to contradict the doctor’s conclusion Nevertheless, she thought that either Dr Cha, who had earned a PhD in psychiatry in the United States and been idolized in globally recognized uy was below normal

‘Both of them are simply abnormal Or they are normal, and I’m the only crazy one in the rooone insane’, she thought as her head spun

Dr Cha picked up the forot up

“Society needs different kinds of people Let it be You don’t need to look deep into it By the way, I’ Seoyoon?”

“Yes”

“Do you think she will read it?”

“She will Those who shut their mind are more likely to yearn for attention froh this time” Dr Cha took the questionnaire that Lee Hyun had filled in and headed to the ward Her destination was a special ward located on the 12^th floor

With the brand-new medical instru pool and an indoor gym, the room cost nearly twenty million won a day

“Hi, Seoyoon, I’ at her patient, Cha Eunhee entered the ward A pale-faced girl lifted her head fro superhts, would be overshadowed by her beauty—but her face was empty of emotion Like a French doll, she seeave her beauty, ht

For the girl was so beautiful, she was overly-loved by her protective father The taboo blurring the line between father and daughter had never been broken, but her mother was paranoid, suspicious of her husband

Herin relentless abuse in the early years, and then cairl had lost the power of words

Back when she was young, Seoyoon had been an angel trapped in an earthly body Dr Cha, who used to be a close friend of hers, always felt sorry that she was deprived of her fair share of love and innocence

“Take a look at this I’m not allowed to remove any document froave the girl the forlided over the paper Dr Cha hoped she would burst into laughter

Do you know that, if you laugh this liainst all odds, it will be your first tiht

But the still face shattered the doctor’s hopes The girl looked over the questionnaire and just returned it to her The doctor felt heartbroken as she reht… Do you need anything else?” Dr Cha asked

Seoyoon gently shook her head

“Then, feel free to call ”

Dr Cha slipped out of the rooh?” the nurse asked; she wasn’t permitted to enter the rooain,” the nurse said

“No I can’t find a way to open her mind,” Dr Cha said “I must rehabilitate her to maintain the president’s faith in ists, psychiatrists and shamans had been hired to tackle Seoyoon’s condition, to no avail None of theave up any hope for the girl

The nurse was also tearful She was sad that such a cute girl neither talked nor laughed, stuck alone in her own closed shell

“Isn’t there any therapy or medicine to help her?” the nurse asked

“A psychiatric re as the patient refuses to open her mind and accept reality,” Dr Cha said

“Then, she’s going to live like that for the rest of her life… ”

“We et her back She just needs a cue, so that will lead her to face reality”

“But it’s already been five years Her consciousness one”

“It is our job to let that happen Noher back” Dr Cha’s resolution was fierce

She had majored in psychiatry and voluntarily come to this hospital in order to save Seoyoon

“I already started a new treato”

“I’ve never heard of it”

“Of course not It’s because I had to keep it secret It’s Royal Road She’s spending her days and nights in the ga,”

“Then—”

“Exactly Let her start over in the fictional world Take her out of the shell, and she will move on step by step where she can interact with others I hope she will regain her lost faith in people, and feel emotions that she had never felt before, at least in virtual reality”

Back hoed into Royal Road

Though Lee Hyun had dealt only one item there so far his status was triple diaick was valued at over three billion won

It alone elevated hie

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A list or ite A keyword yielded millions of search results, but few of them actually reached a deal

As plenty of users were eager to get hold of cool iteh The supply could not keep up with it

The system favored sellers, and when one of them posted his item, the auction rapped up in minutes

<tbody></tbody>

Iteeous prices

They were followed by lesser items beneath, which still amounted to at least a hundred thousand won

This bull naled that items were in short supply

If Weed had not been fortunate enough to obtain the iron sword in the beginning, he would have repeated commonplace quests here and there to collect a few coppers each time, and rushed to a blacksmith’s workshop to buy a crude sword before he headed to the field

Otherwise, he would have to punchon the stats that he had accu the scarecrow

In that case, his attack poould have been halved without the effects of sword ured, craft ite were inexpensive Items relevant to the sculptor class were not even available

Royal Road had opened only fifteenup and adventure Lee Hyun had not seen any other craftsmen

Seventy percent of the continent was still uncharted, that is why eons are still unexplored, and many quests unsolved With an infinite opportunity presented before their eyes, only a few users dreadom was a relatively neorld that had been discovered only sixto real world tidoains

Rosenheim was far away from the center of the continent, but uncharted territories and unearthed dungeons were scattered everywhere, and strong monsters abounded This was the primary reason why Lee Hyun chose Rosenheim to start his adventure

“Did I start too late? No, I still have a chance to catch up,” he told himself

Lee Hyun shook his head While the co adventure, Lee Hyun had worked out and collected information instead for one whole year to prepare He didn’t want to sell his account anyaame where an iris scan was taken to verify the player’s identity Plus, Lee Hyun had to stay in the business rather thana quick buck

Royal Road had to support his family financially at least in the next five years

“At this rate, Royal Road will giveto live off of for the next five, no, ten years Then, I can afford to send Hye Yeon to college Stability coh school dropout, but Hye Yeon deserves a better life—” he said to hi</e

Lee Hyun looked around and realized that Grandma and Hye Yeon were out of the house, so he picked up the phone reluctantly

“hello Who’s speaking?”

“Lee Hyun, is that you? You still sound rough on the phone, hoon”

Lee Hyun had not heard this voice for a long tiht bitterly

“Hey, what’s up?” Lee Hyun asked

“We have an aluive a shi+t about it Isn’t it supposed be attended by the graduates only? It’s not even funny if a dropout like me shows up in the reunion”

“But—”

“No buts You knohy I quit school I don’t want anything to do with the school now That’s it”

“…”

“Do ain”

hed deeply It was a phone call that he didn’t want in the least

If only he had been given an MIB-type memory eraser, then, without question, he would have erased the whole three years of high school—the worst memory and time in his life

Back then, Lee Hyun had been beaten and threatened by the loan sharks He had to sneak in to school He had gone to school at dawn and left athide and seek

For a couple of days, Lee Hyun had dodged the loan sharks, but they were sht They had hired street racketeers to pressurize the teachers

Lee Hyun had been even told by his hoht in front of his classmates

The teacher had knelt before the lost student, pleading aet involved in that madness

“It was the last straw I quit school the next day,” he said to himself

Lee Hyun was a little curious what his friends were like in college But showing his face in the reunion would only revive shamefulleft for aain

Weed never skipped his daily routine of settling down in front of Rodriquez’s manor fro days such as this?

“What do you think about going hunting in the West Valley? Hippies have a high level, but if we teaether, they’re piece of cake”

“I heard you joined an escort quest for the caravans bound for Eline Village?”

“The price of troll blood has soared lately by al”

Plenty of conversations snuck into Weed’s ears

Horses whinnied, carriages wheeled by

Sitting by the main avenue, Weed could catch lots of infor on in the world Without this type of fun, he would have given up already